Socioeconomic impacts of CO2-induced climatic changes and the comparative chances of alternative political responses: Prevention, compensation, and adaptation
✍ Scribed by Klaus M. Meyer-Abich
- Publisher
- Springer
- Year
- 1980
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 907 KB
- Volume
- 2
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0165-0009
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Prevention of climatic change by changing human economic behaviour or compensation for climatically detrimental effects by technological fixes is not necessarily better than adaptation. In fact, there are good reasons to conclude that adaptation is the most rational political option, at the same time requiring least marginal action. The problems arising from CO 2 all appear at present to be marginal ones which arise, and should be taken care of, for other reasons as well. With respect to CO 2-induced changes we could not do better than do what should be done in any event for reasons of development policy.
Life in the industrialized countries is to some extent comparable to living in the city of 'Diaspar' in A. C. Clarke's novel 'The City and the Stars', Diaspar is a triumph of technology, closed in upon itself under a huge dome, a perfect sphere -so to speak -which may neither be left nor entered except for some entropy exchange with the rest of the world. In fact, people in the industrialized societies live remarkably isolated from nature, and this applies especially to weather or climate developments. As a striking example, I may refer to our way of travelling over long distances-e.g, to scientific conferences: we use airplanes which are --for good reasons -air-conditioned, arrive at an air-conditioned airport, take a few breaths of genuine or even natural climate, then (often enough) we enter an airconditioned taxi which brings us into an air-conditioned hotel or directly into the airconditioned conference center. All this may give rise to a certain apprehensiveness, particularly when the topic of the conference happens to be the climate/society-interface and when, as it once occurred to me, above all in the airplane, you read an article stating that agriculture in the future will not necessarily have to be connected with activities outdoors, since what plants need to grow can also be supplied to them with nutrient solutions and artificial light. Thus even the one basic activity which up to now was conspicuously dependent on climatic conditions could also be transferred, as it seems, into the completely artificial environment of 'almost-Diaspar' in which the industrial societies are generally living. In it, among other things, we are talking about the impact of climate changes on our life.